Rewrite the localization teams docs to improve legibility, and explicitly permit members who know each other (#12720)

~~Maybe I have too many exclamation marks, let me know if I should
metaphorically calm down.~~ Fixed now.

My wording is intentionally biased toward languages spoken less
(**edit**: not nearly as much anymore), but I specifically do not
disallow members who know each other regardless of language popularity.
Quoting myself from Discord[^convo]:

> people who know each other are more likely to have more similar tastes
or quirks in their language use by virtue of (perhaps subconsciously)
stealing off each other, and there's also the whole “eh it's good enough
i trust that you thought it through” thing that's more likely if you
know the other translators already

I don't believe it's *necessarily worse*, and if you have more than two
members then the issue greatly diminishes too, but I don't want people
to see this and go “oh no I need to get my translations in before
Ghostty 1.4 that releases while I'm sleeping tomorrow so I should ask my
bestie to help”, and to instead be willing to be more patient, at least
for a reasonable amount of time (which I consider to be ≤ 2 months).

[^convo]: @trag1c and I chatted about this prior to this PR in
`#maintainers` on the Ghostty Discord server. If you have access to that
channel, check out these links:
[1](https://discord.com/channels/1005603569187160125/1337443701403815999/1504241367357063188),
[2](https://discord.com/channels/1005603569187160125/1337443701403815999/1504465642361979021),
[3](https://discord.com/channels/1005603569187160125/1337443701403815999/1505255908676993135).
This commit is contained in:
Leah Amelia Chen
2026-08-01 23:26:56 +08:00
committed by GitHub

View File

@@ -160,25 +160,31 @@ the right click menu.
## Localization teams
Every locale has a localization team consisting of the locale's maintainers.
These maintainers review contributions to their locale's translations, and are
responsible for translating new strings when requested: occasionally, all locale
maintainers are pinged and requested to translate missing strings.
Every locale has a _localization team_ consisting of the locale's _maintainers_.
These maintainers are responsible for upkeep of their locale's translations.
Anyone can contribute strings for any language's translations, and may also
volunteer to join that locale's team; a locale maintainer is only distinguished
from other speakers of the language in that:
The primary purposes of being a locale maintainer are a declaration of
_commitment_ to their upkeep, and being _informed_ of updates or update requests
of the translations, via GitHub's review requests or @mentions.
1. Locale maintainers _declare commitment_ to updating their translations.
2. Locale maintainers are _occasionally pinged_, via GitHub's @mentions, when
there are untranslated strings.
3. Locale maintainers are _informed of updates_ to the translations they
maintain via GitHub's review requests.
So that future updates to a locale are possible, each localization team must
have at least two members. If you are introducing a new language, please
**consider volunteering** to be a part of the localization team, by mentioning
that you are willing to be a part of it in the pull request description! You,
and all reviewers, will be offered to join the locale team before the pull
request to add the new language is merged, but this denotes your dedication
upfront—for a pull request adding a new language to be merged, it needs at least
one review from a speaker of that language _and_ at least two localization team
members. No one is _required_ to join a localization team, even if they
introduced support for the language.
That's all there is to it, really. If you wish, you may leave your localization
teams at any point in the future.
Each localization team must have at least two maintainers, who can review each
other's translations. Likewise, if you open a pull request for a new language,
it won't be merged until at least two people volunteer. You—the creator of the
PR—likely intend to continue helping out with them, so please make it clear
up-front if that is not your intent.
There is no requirement that locale maintainers must not know each other. If you
are adding translations for languages that have few speakers, you might wish to
ask a friend of yours who also speaks that language whether they'd be willing to
help with Ghostty translations.
### `CODEOWNERS`